His Heart

by Claire Kingsley

I figured she’d leave, now that she’d said what she wanted to say. But she traced her finger along the outside of her water glass. I just ate my breakfast.

  “So, what have you been up to?” she asked. “Are you still at U of I?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “For now.”

  “Do you think you’ll move back to Waverly after you graduate?”

  I paused and put my fork down, meeting her eyes. “No.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Why not?”

  I was surprised at the sudden sense of conviction I felt. But hearing Cami—who had been as much a part of that plan for the future as the job at my dad’s dealership—ask me that question began to harden my resolve. “Because that isn’t the life I want.”

  “You’re going to turn down your dad’s job?” she asked. “You know in a few years he’d have you running things. Maybe even make you part owner. You’d make a fortune. You could live like a king in Waverly.”

  “So?”

  “So? He’s handing you a career on a silver platter. You could have your life back.” She paused and batted her eyelashes a few times. “You could have everything back if you wanted it.”

  “I don’t want it,” I said, and a spasm of pain crossed her features. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but Jesus, why couldn’t anyone understand? “I’m sorry, Cami, but this isn’t about you. My life is different now. The Sebastian you knew in high school isn’t who I am anymore.”

  “Of course it isn’t,” she said. “I’ve changed too. That’s what happens when you grow up and start experiencing things. But that doesn’t mean you should throw away the chance to have a comfortable life.”

  “I don’t want comfortable,” I said. “And you know, I don’t think I ever did. Even if my heart had never gotten sick and I’d never gone through any of it, I wouldn’t have been satisfied with comfortable. I would have resented it.”

  “Then what do you want?” she asked.

  “I want to take risks,” I said. “Go places I’ve never been. I want to pursue my dreams and fail and try again. I want passion. If I’m going to be here, I want to really live. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

  “But why can’t you have both?” she asked. “And what if some things are just meant to be?”

  I pushed my plate away. I was getting tired of this conversation. “Did you come here to try to talk me into something?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Look, I accept your apology,” I said. “But if you’re fishing for some sign that you and I might have another shot, you’re in the wrong place. It’s not because I’m mad at you. It’s because I’ve moved on. I have someone in my life who means the world to me. You want to know what I want? Her. The rest, I honestly don’t know yet. But Brooke is the one thing I’m sure of.”

  “What if that’s a mistake?” she asked.

  I raised my eyebrows. “You’re asking me if Brooke is a mistake?”

  She paused, pressing her lips together, her eyes on the table. I couldn’t tell if she was thinking about what to say, or just being dramatic.

  “I know how you met her,” she said finally.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.

  “Seb, your mom told me she was supposed to marry him—the organ donor. And then he died, and they were so young. That must have been a devastating loss. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that maybe that,” she said, pointing to my chest, “is why she’s with you? That she doesn’t really want you? She wants what’s left of him?”

  “Why are you discussing Brooke with my mom?” I asked.

  “Because we’re worried about you,” she said.

  “Cami, you lost your right to worry about me, or who I’m with, when you broke up with me.”

  She crossed her arms. “We’ve known each other since kindergarten. Our mothers have been friends for years. Just because we stopped dating doesn’t mean I can’t worry about you.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” I said. “And if my mom has an issue with my life, or my girlfriend, she should take it up with me. Not discuss it with my ex.”

  “It’s not like she’s gossiping,” she said. “She’s concerned for her son and she doesn’t think you’ll listen to her.”

  “Well, I’m telling you she doesn’t have anything to be concerned about. And neither do you. And as for Brooke, and this,” I said, touching my chest, “that’s not only morbid, it’s insulting.”

  “I’m not trying to insult either of you,” she said. “But I don’t understand how you can throw away the life you were supposed to have. It was almost taken from you, and now you can have it back. You just have to reach out and grab it. But you won’t.”

  “What if I told you I was moving back to Waverly after I graduated?” I asked. “That I was going to work for my dad, and buy a nice house, and be a volunteer wrestling coach, just like everyone always figured I would—but I was going to do it all with Brooke. Would that make a difference? Is it really my career and financial stability you’re worried about?”

  Her lips parted and her eyes narrowed, but she smoothed out her features before she replied. “I’m worried about all of you. About your life, and your happiness.”

  “I’ve got it covered, Cami,” I said. “I am happy. Happier than I’ve ever been.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ear and gathered up her purse. “Well, that’s good, then. I hope you’re really as happy as you claim to be.”

  I didn’t say anything else as she walked out the door.

  God, my mother. It pissed me off that she’d been talking about Brooke with Cami. My mom didn’t know Brooke. She’d obviously made some ridiculous assumptions. Brooke didn’t want me to be some kind of second-choice replacement for Liam Harper. If that had been the case, she would have sought me out. As it was, she hadn’t wanted to meet me at all.

  And this heart in my chest still sometimes felt like a wall between us. Not the way it once had, but I did wonder if she’d ever be able to truly let go. Truly move on. My heart wasn’t the reason she wanted me—it was one of the reasons she’d been afraid to be with me.

  Moving back to Waverly, working for my dad, marrying Cami… living in a nice house with our two-point-five kids and a minivan in the driveway… that was safe. That was why my mom wanted it for me. But it wouldn’t be living—just existing.

  I didn’t want safe. I didn’t want friends like the guys I’d known in high school. I wanted Charlie, who’d had my back every step of the way, even when he was still basically my rival. I didn’t want a girl like Cami, who was more interested in her reputation and finding someone to take care of her. I knew why she wanted me. She saw me as the means to a life of comfort—a fancy house and a new car every year. A life where she was the envy of all the other wives in Waverly.

  I pulled out my admissions packets again. Maybe there was a piece of myself that I still needed to recapture. The drive and focus I’d once had. That single-minded resolve to do whatever it took to achieve my goals. It was why I’d won state. In a lot of ways, it had gotten me through my illness. I might not have survived long enough to get the transplant if I hadn’t been mentally tough. Driven. It had only been at the end that I’d wanted to give up.

  But since I’d been better, I hadn’t applied that drive to anything. Not school or my future. I’d always thought of myself as an all-in guy, but the only thing I’d gone all in on was Brooke.

  She’d brought that out in me. With her, I felt a flame burning inside. A desire to really live, not just exist.

  I ripped open the first envelope and spread the letter out on the table. It was time to start living.

  32

  Brooke

  The first thing I realized when I got to Phoenix was that I wasn’t used to the weather anymore. It was mid-December, and it had been cold in Iowa. I’d worn my heaviest coat and a pair of gloves to the airport. When I got to Arizona, it was sunny and in the seventies. Like an Iowa summer. I complained about being cold all the
time, but the warm sun in Phoenix felt wrong, especially with Christmas decorations everywhere.

  The first two days were difficult, but I handled it. I met with the funeral director and got in touch with my mom’s boyfriend. We made arrangements to meet so he could give me some of her things.

  I had a tearful reunion with Mary and Brian Harper. It was good to see them again, but staying at their house was almost more than I could take. Every room was full of memories of Liam.

  I didn’t know how to feel about him anymore. I looked at his pictures on the walls and tried to remember him as he’d been back then. But he was fading from my mind. The sound of his voice didn’t come to me so easily now. I couldn’t remember what his hands had felt like on my skin, or his mouth on my lips.

  Sleeping there was worse. If Liam’s spirit existed anywhere in this world, it was in his parents’ house. I slept in Olivia’s old room—a room that had once been mine too. But Liam’s bedroom seemed to call to me from across the hall. They’d emptied it years ago and turned it into a guest room. The door hung open and for a moment, it looked like his room again. The same room I’d crept into in the dead of night. Where we’d nestled under the covers together and discovered what it was like to love.

  The house next door—the last place I’d seen my mom—was freshly painted with a brand-new fence and kids’ toys strewn around the yard. Nice cars in the driveway. It looked happily lived in—not like when we’d been there. I figured the inside must look nice too. By now someone had to have repainted the walls, covering that hideous peach my mom had chosen. Repaired the dents and scratches, washed away the stench of smoke. Removed the scars of the broken family who had lived there.

  The funeral was scheduled for Monday, so I decided to stay. But I didn’t think I could sleep at the Harpers’ again. I let them think I was flying out Friday, and checked myself into a hotel on the other side of Phoenix.

  Sunday afternoon, I drove my rental car to meet my mom’s boyfriend at their house outside Mesa. It was on a quiet residential street and from the outside, it looked like it might be a nice place to live. I could imagine a normal family living there, with pots and pans they actually used for cooking. A dining table where they shared meals. A living room that wasn’t piled with junk. But I knew outsides could be deceiving.

  I knocked and a man with shaggy hair, a scruffy chin, and skin that was tan and weathered opened the door. He had deep lines in his forehead and around his eyes, but I guessed he was younger than he appeared. He looked like he’d probably spent a lot of his life working outside in the sun. He was dressed in a faded blue t-shirt and a worn pair of jeans.

  “You must be Desiree’s daughter,” he said with a slight Texas drawl, and stepped aside. “I’m Mack. You can come on in.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting when I saw where she’d last lived, but it wasn’t this. It was clean, for one thing. Mostly, anyway. There were two full ash trays on a coffee table, but the couch was clear. No beer cans or poorly hidden drug paraphernalia. The odor of cigarettes hung in the air, but no weed. No stench of mildew or the sickly-sweet scent of a bag of garbage that had been in the house too long.

  Mack glanced around, then gestured to the couch. “Here, you can have a seat. I’d offer you something to drink, but I don’t have anything except water. Guess I should go to the store, but I haven’t bothered.”

  The hurt in his voice caught my attention, and I took a better look at his face. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had the greasy look of someone who needed a shower. But he was stone cold sober. The redness in his eyes and the way he fidgeted weren’t because he was drunk or high, trying to act normal. I could spot that a mile away. He was sad. Grieving.

  I could spot that a mile away too. I knew it all too well.

  “It’s okay.” I lowered myself onto the edge of the couch where he’d cleared a space. “I don’t need anything.”

  “Always wondered if I was going to meet you someday.” He sat on the other side. “You remind me of her. Although I’m guessing maybe you look a bit like your dad, too.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Well, you probably have questions,” he said.

  God, where did I even begin? “Yeah. I suppose you know I haven’t seen her in a long time. The last time I heard from her, she was living in Louisiana with… I can’t remember what she said his name was. How long have you known her?”

  “Three years,” he said. “We met in Houston.”

  “Three years?” I asked. “Were you together all that time?”

  He nodded. “Yep. It was rocky sometimes, but I’ll tell ya, I loved your mama.”

  She’d never had a relationship last so long when I’d been with her. And I couldn’t remember ever hearing a man say he loved her—not in a way that was believable, at least. “Wow, that’s amazing. When did you move here?”

  “About a year ago,” he said. “She’d been sober a couple of months by then, and decided a change of scenery would do her good. She always said Arizona was her home, no matter where else she’d been. So I brought her back here.”

  I’d barely heard a word since sober. “She was sober? But I thought… the accident…”

  “She had almost fourteen months of sobriety,” he said. “Obviously she fell off the wagon again.”

  “So, you were with her when she was using? Since you’ve been with her three years and she had fourteen months sober.” I wanted to ask if he’d been using too, but it felt awkward.

  “She was clean when we met,” he said. “That time lasted about six months, and I met her toward the beginning of it. When she relapsed, I stuck it out. Thought maybe I loved her enough to get her through it—get us both through it. And after a while, it worked. She did two months in rehab and when she got out, I swear, she was a new woman.”

  “Um, I’m sorry if this is too personal, but are you an addict too? I only ask because the men she dated when I was a kid always were.”

  He shook his head. “Naw, never touched the stuff. Well, I smoke, and I reckon that’s what’ll put me in my grave someday. But I don’t even drink much, let alone the other stuff.”

  “So, she was sober and doing well when you moved here,” I said. “How long ago did she relapse?”

  “I can’t say for sure,” he said. “I only found out a few days before the wreck. But I work two jobs, so I’m not here all that much. She had a job too, but I guess a few months back, she’d started missing work. Didn’t tell me about it. She got fired a few weeks ago for not showing up. Didn’t tell me that either. I was at work when she got in the wreck. If I’d been with her, I wouldn’t have let her drive.”

  The guilt in his voice cut through me. “No, it wasn’t your fault. You can’t blame yourself for what she did.”

  He shook his head, his eyes on the floor. “I swear to you, I tried everything. And she’d been doing so good for so long. I thought the worst was over.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice quiet. “But thank you for helping her. I always wanted to believe that it was possible for her to get better. That maybe she was happy somewhere. It sounds like she was, for a little while anyway.”

  “The worst part is, I should have known better,” he said. “People are who they are, Brooke. You can’t change them. I couldn’t change your mama. I think I always knew it was going to end this way. I wanted to believe she could change, but some things are so deeply ingrained, you may as well be trying to shoot the moon out of the sky. Didn’t matter how long she went without drinking, or the drugs, or picking fights with me. Eventually, it always came back to that. She always went back to being who she was.”

  I stared at him, a deep sense of dread filling me. The air felt thick and my eyes were dry and gritty. Suddenly, I had to get out of there. “Okay, well, thanks for meeting me. I hope… I hope you’ll be okay. But I’m sorry, I don’t think I can stay.”

  “Oh, hang on a minute. I have someth
ing for you.”

  He got up and disappeared through a door. My back clenched painfully and my stomach roiled with nausea. I almost got up and left—this place was suffocating me—but Mack came out, holding a black plastic file box.

  “This is some stuff you might want to keep,” he said. “I’m not sure what all’s in it, but she always took care to make sure we had it when we moved and whatnot.”

  I stood and took the box. It wasn’t heavy enough to be full of files, but it definitely had weight. “Okay, thank you.”

  He nodded. “And Brooke, I’m sorry. She talked about you a lot. About how smart you are, and how pretty. I think she wanted to see you again, but she was afraid.”

  My eyes filled with tears. I took a deep breath so they wouldn’t spill. Not yet. “Thanks, Mack. I’m glad to know she had some happy times with you. Even if it ended badly.”

  “Me too,” he said. “Will I see you at the funeral?”

  “Yeah,” I said, even though it was a lie. “I’ll see you then. Take care.”

  The music was louder than I remembered. It wasn’t live, although it reminded me of Jared’s band. I wondered what had happened to those guys. With their front man in jail, they’d probably gone their separate ways. I couldn’t even remember most of their names.

  “Well, holy shit,” Rick said. He walked down the bar to where I sat in the last stool at the far end. “Look at you, kiddo. Long time, no see.”

  “Hi, Rick,” I said.

  “The usual?” he asked.

  I hesitated for a second, knowing this was all a terrible idea. There was no reason for me to be here. But I’d gone back to my hotel and felt like I was crawling out of my skin. Everything Mack had said raced through my brain, kicking up the dust of faded memories. Bringing up old pain.

  “Sure,” I said, although I didn’t remember what my usual had been.

  He left for a moment and came back with a glass of what looked like whiskey.

  “You look good,” he said, sliding the glass across the bar. “What have you been up to?”